The Hunters

you.’

53

As the group — minus Garcia, who stayed in the village to tend to his gear — made its way across the gentle foothills that led to a mini-plateau, Borovsky pointed out a narrow-gauge railway that cut through the sparse forest. Up ahead was a small mining train. It was covered by tattered tarpaulins and a blanket of carefully meshed twigs and branches.

Fueled by joy, Dobrev rushed over uneven stone and high grass to reach it. He excitedly pulled off the tarps and twigs, and stared at the train underneath. It consisted of a small, open trolley car; a slightly larger, open freight car; a four-seat passenger car with no glass in its few windows; and a diminutive engine that seemed little more than a lawn mower. In the train industry, it was known as an ‘omnivore’ because it could run on coal or firewood.

Chasing after Dobrev, Jasmine suddenly saw the little boy in the old man. His somber face erupted in a smile the likes of which she had never seen on him — or anyone else.

To her, the trains and track looked like an overgrown toy set.

To him, it seemed like the Romanian treasure itself.

As he talked, he ran his hands over everything: from the roofs above to the mini-tracks below. ‘Our train rests on thousand-millimeter track. This rail is not even six hundred.’

Decebal, who was the only villager with the group, nodded in agreement. He waited until everyone had reached the train before he started to speak in broken Russian laced with Romanian. With Borovsky’s help, Jasmine translated the information for her team.

‘They laid down the tracks around 1912. Before that, everything was donkeys and carts. After that, they started exporting lumber, barely enough to keep the village going, but enough. Eventually they laid heavier gauge tracks further down, that’s what we came up on, but then …’ She paused. ‘Well, that’s weird. He said business just stopped.’

Jasmine confirmed her understanding with Decebal and Borovsky, then passed on the information. ‘Business didn’t decline,’ she explained. ‘It just stopped. Completely.’

‘Meaning,’ said Cobb, ‘that when the prince rolled in he bought the town and didn’t want any exports coming from this direction.’

‘So they went back to carts,’ McNutt said. ‘After the fall of the Romanovs, that’s all they could afford.’

‘Imagine being the guardians of an immense treasure and being poor as dirt,’ Sarah said.

‘They didn’t think of it that way,’ Jasmine assured them. ‘It was more like being the palace eunuch. They were honored to serve the queen or lady.’

McNutt snorted. ‘Now there’s a trade I’m not down with.’

‘Yeah,’ Sarah said. ‘Without the boys, you’d have to change your name to “McNada”.’

The other team members groaned. Except for Cobb, who was studying the small, narrow tracks. They reminded him of the kind of tracks used for ore cars inside coalmines.

The group continued forward, following Borovsky over the flat but scrubby terrain. Since the colonel was left-handed, Anna remained on his right side the entire time. That way, if he ever had to draw his gun or knife, she would be out of his way.

‘There’s a reason I prefer cities,’ Sarah said.

‘Asphalt, right?’ McNutt said.

‘Nope, stores,’ she said as she struggled with her footing. ‘I could’ve stopped and bought the right damn hiking shoes.’

‘Point taken,’ McNutt said. ‘That’s reason number eleven in my onging list of ass-kicks I’m gonna give Papi when we get back.’ He frowned. ‘Hey, you did cut him out of the ear-loop, didn’t you, chief?’

Cobb nodded.

‘Good,’ McNutt said as his grip tightened on the duffel bag full of weapons. ‘I want it to be a surprise. After he gives me my money.’

As they continued their hike, the ground crunched like dry corn flakes. The underbrush was merciless and at least a foot deep. It hungrily snagged at their feet as they pressed forward.

‘There hasn’t been a wildfire here in at least a half-century,’ Cobb observed.

‘Is that significant?’ Jasmine asked, after translating for Borovsky.

‘The two major causes of big fires are lightning and cigarettes,’ Cobb said. ‘I’ve seen a couple of old, charred tree trunks here and there, meaning the region does get big storms. But I get the sense that this area is protected like a sanctuary.’

‘Meaning?’ McNutt asked.

‘We might not see it, but there is security.’

Borovsky laughed when Jasmine had finished translating.

‘Yes, there is,’ Borovsky assured them.

McNutt paused in mid-stride. He glanced around nervously. ‘What kind of security? Landmines? Bear traps? Dwarves?’

The group ignored him.

‘The trees have always provided layers of concealment, offered food in the form of wildlife, and prevented erosion with their strong roots,’ Borovsky said. ‘When the train was built, it would have been difficult and counter- productive for the builders to cut the trees down. So the people who anchored the tracks went off in many directions, creating paths wherever they could. The effect is an impression of a train to nowhere.’

‘Like one of those sightseeing railroads in parks and on mountains,’ Garcia contributed.

Jasmine translated for Borovsky.

‘Exactly so,’ the colonel said. ‘Complete with bear and deer in the woods to make the occasional appearance.’

‘Bears! I knew it,’ McNutt said. ‘Ask them if they can shoot cannons.’

Jasmine rolled her eyes. She wouldn’t be translating that.

‘There was a side benefit to the multiplicity of paths,’ Jasmine continued for Borovsky. ‘Anyone following the train would be paying attention to the tracks — not to the sentries in the trees, who would be waiting with pistols or a noose.’

Garcia looked up anxiously.

‘If you can see them,’ the Russian said, ‘then they’ve failed.’

‘Right,’ Sarah said. ‘And those guys wouldn’t be smoking up there. The lit butts would give them away.’

‘Bad for your health in more ways than one,’ McNutt laughed.

54

They continued walking toward what seemed to be another grove of trees. Borovsky told them to wait before he went into a bordering thicket, stepping around a batch of trees whose branches seemed weighted down as though bearing heavy snows. The limbs formed a wall through which nothing was visible. It took Borovsky nearly a minute of ducking and maneuvering to make his way to the other side. Suddenly, there was a whoosh, and the branches snapped back as if the curtain had never existed.

From the team’s perspective, there didn’t appear to be anything ahead — not even the Russian colonel. There was only a solid, sunless black that seemed to go on forever.

Decebal flashed them his gap-toothed smile and followed, stepping into the entrance and vanishing as if a carnival magician had made him disappear. The Americans looked at each other with raised eyebrows and appreciative grins, then followed Anna into the darkness.